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Florus: Epitome of Roman History

Text and Translation on LacusCurtius

This part of my site presents a transcription of the original Latin text and the English translation of it by E. S. Forster, as printed in the Loeb Classical Library edition, published in 1929.

The Author, the Manuscripts

As with most ancient authors, not that much is known of Florus; we're not even sure of his full name or his exact dates. What we do know is more or less covered by Prof. Forster's Introduction, along with the manuscript tradition.

A little corrective note to a near universal opinion out there, though, that Florus is inaccurate, dull, and rhetorical. Inaccurate, in details, he may well be: but considering just how difficult it is to summarize seven hundred years of history in a small book, the book is surprisingly good, and I would certainly recommend him to the student who wants to get a solid overview of Roman history.

As for rhetorical, like most of his age, he is indeed that. Yet if we read him carefully, we will see that Florus is by no means as rhetorical as other authors of his period, and, more importantly, rarely indulges in rhetoric for its own sake. He often uses it to bring out interesting connections or to fix ideas in his reader's mind: in fact, not infrequently, what an inattentive reader might dismiss as rhetoric ought instead to tip us off to Florus' dry sense of humor. It's not too much of a stretch to be reminded of Jane Austen's hilarious History of England; not the latter's charm nor genius, mind you — for one thing, he wasn't primarily aiming at writing a comic short story — but Florus avoids what would indeed be a dull schoolbook condensation, by sharing with us his quirky, somewhat cynical view of his subject: in one little section alone, for example, we have elephants whose decorative accents include their own teeth (II.8.16); those artistic and frivolous Greeklings who liked the announcement of their own political freedom just as much as a flute concerto (II.7.15); countries pledging their sacred troth to each other to get themselves conquered a third time (II.14.1), and other instances which you are now armed to spot for yourself. So student beware! You've read that Florus merely summarized Livy and is therefore inferior; plus this is an ancient writer, therefore someone to be both discounted and read so earnestly as to turn off all our critical faculties: maybe instead it's time to read the man for himself, with a fresh eye, without paying too much attention to what someone once said and others have endlessly repeated.

Liber Primus • Book I

Liber Alter • Book II

Copyright

The translation is now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U. S. Copyright Code, since the copyright expired in 1957 and was not renewed at the appropriate time, which would have been that year or the year before. (Details here on the copyright law involved.)

Chapter and Section Numbering, Local Links

The small section numbers mark local links, according to a consistent scheme; you can therefore link directly to any passage. Similarly, for citation purposes, the Loeb edition pagination is indicated by local links in the sourcecode.

For the larger units of text, the Loeb edition uses two numbering schemes: the first, in two Books and large sections bearing Roman numerals, is prominent in their pages and therefore on this site as well; the second is more discreetly marked, in four Books and somewhat smaller sections bearing Arabic numerals. This may mystify you, gentle reader, as much as it did me for a while, especially since nowhere does the Loeb edition explain the situation. As I eventually discovered, though, the two schemes are those of competing editions: the prominent one is the norm today, the discreet one is the older system, still sometimes referenced.

Finally, the "Parts" referred to on this site, as in the header bars and the window title bars, are of no authority: they merely stand for my own division of the work into webpages.

Proofreading

As almost always, I retyped the text by hand rather than scanning it — not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise I heartily recommend: Qui scribit, bis legit. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if success­ful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

This transcription has been has been meticulously proofread; first by me, then once more by Adam Favaro, for whose additional corrections I am of course grateful. In the table of contents above, the sections are therefore shown on blue backgrounds, indicating that I believe the text of them to be completely errorfree. As elsewhere onsite, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme. Should you spot an error, however . . . please do report it.

Other Texts of the Epitome Online

Two other Latin texts of Florus may be found online, each one a different edition, and different from the Loeb edition I present here:

1 (with a French translation) • 2.

The 1889 English translation by Selby Watson is also online as well; and if you're looking for the Commentarii de Bello of Florus Germanicus — not the same author, but a 17c scholar — he too is online, at the University of Mannheim.

The Poems of Florus

As you read in the Introduction, the author of the Epitome of Roman History may be the same man as the poet; and then again, maybe not: therefore the latter gets his own separate orientation page.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
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